Changes in the most recent release of Ghostscript

This document is news about the most recent Ghostscript release. For earlier versions, see the history documents:

History of Ghostscript versions 7.n
History of Ghostscript versions 6.n
History of Ghostscript versions 5.n
History of Ghostscript versions 4.n
History of Ghostscript versions 3.n
History of Ghostscript versions 2.n
History of Ghostscript versions 1.n

For other information, see the Ghostscript overview.


Version 7.20 (2002-04-03)

This is the first development release after the 7.0x series. While it is a development release, it is likely to be quite stable and robust, largely thanks to automated regression testing.

Major changes include:

In addition, the following improvements have been merged from the 7.04 release:

And, of course, the usual bug fixing and performance enhancement.

There has also been considerable development of our DeviceN implementation and related color work on a private branch. These new features are not included in this release. We expect to merge them into the main branch soon.

There exists another private branch which integrates PCL and PostScript/PDF in the same executable. Again, that work is not reflected in this release.

The following SourceForge bug numbers were open at the time of release: 219798, 405342, 406979, 407342, 414947 414985, 415142, 416131, 416830, 418241, 421057, 423838, 427193, 427314, 427347, 428891, 428973, 432040, 434277, 436099, 437285, 438957, 443745, 446344, 446672, 448199, 450663, 451456, 452155, 453969, 458261, 458500, 458775, 458780, 459647, 462221, 465720, 465936, 468762, 472681, 474745, 475147, 477644, 479071, 482033, 482038, 483629, 484752, 484753, 485498, 485510, 485510, 487953, 493348, 495319, 498595, 503794, 505047, 505151, 505429, 506375, 508081, 508675, 509646, 510808, 511232, 513905, 514616, 514898, 515475, 515966, 516653, 517349, 518742, 520686, 520972, 521354, 521597, 521664, 521916, 522486, 522507, 524292, 525508, 525712, 526099, 526491, 527152, 527525, 528647, 529103, 529411, 529578, 530011, 530213, 530588, 531300, 532468, 533467, 534637, 535366, 535395, 535395, 535401, 535752, 535836, 535997, 536863, 536877, 537066, 538033, 538042, 538055, 538267, 538311, 538398, 538428.

Incompatible changes

(Interpreter)
	- Updates clients and implementors for the new glyph outline data
structure.
	- -dSAFER flag now restricts read access to arbitrary files in
addition to restricting write access.
	- While not strictly an incompatible change, authors of drivers
with potential security implications are encouraged to review the
security changes, including the LockSafetyParams mechanism.

(Library)
	- Changes all procedures for getting glyph outline data to return
the data by storing it into a gs_glyph_data_t structure that includes memory
management information.  This is a NON-BACKWARD-COMPATIBLE change to both
implementors and clients.  It corrects a significant design error: formerly
these procedures encoded memory management information in their return code,
which was obscure and error-prone.  See src/gsgdata.[hc].

Copyright © 2002 artofcode LLC. All rights reserved.

This software is provided AS-IS with no warranty, either express or implied. This software is distributed under license and may not be copied, modified or distributed except as expressly authorized under the terms of the license contained in the file LICENSE in this distribution. For more information about licensing, please refer to http://www.ghostscript.com/licensing/. For information on commercial licensing, go to http://www.artifex.com/licensing/ or contact Artifex Software, Inc., 101 Lucas Valley Road #110, San Rafael, CA 94903, U.S.A., +1(415)492-9861.

Ghostscript version 7.20, 3 April 2002